Death Strikes Swift and Sure
by itswallie
Summary: YJAM Prompt: When the team finally confronts the Light and a trigger word is given, it's not Superboy that turns. It's Wally. Five times Wally killed as the mole and the one time he couldn't. Rated M for violence and character death.


**YJAM Prompt here**: _Wally is the mole. Before the order for cloning came in at Cadmus the boys underwent the standard brainwashing. Robin has been trained against it, Kaldur and Superboy (who's been subjected to it for quite a bit longer) are both immune because they have different a biology that wasn't taken into account. So when the team finally confronts the light and a trigger word is given it's not Superboy that turns. It's Wally._

I am taking a different tack on _HOW _Wally became the mole, but basically this boils down to Wally-is-really-effing-poweful-and-scary-as-hell-w hen-he's-not-good.

The trigger word is blanked out for now on purpose; you'll learn more about it later.

**TRIGGER WARNINGS: Character death(s), graphic violence. **Writing this fic is the first time I've made myself cry aloud.

* * *

**I. Robin**

The trigger word is *****, and Robin is first.

His rosy lips glisten as they part mid-laugh, "I mea-"

But the brunette doesn't finish his sentence; he slows, frozen in time as Wally shifts into hyperspeed, as he vibrates faster than the speed of sound. The redhead's emerald eyes go glassy, empty now, just vessels for a vicious little Voice hissing _kill, kill, kill_.

It's odd. Sliding into hyperspeed is like dropping into a poor photograph: a picture taken by a careless photographer of unsuspecting friends. People, halfway between expressions, have one drooping eyelid as they complete a blink, the edge of their lip curved in a goofy twist as it wraps around a syllable. They look silly, and it took a long time for Wally not to laugh.

But never Dick. Even now, his head tilts just to the left toward Wally, chin down but eyes up, peeking over the top of his sunglasses. His eyebrow coolly climbs his forehead into his trademark smirk. As he turns from the latest episode of Flaming C, he's pressing against Wally's shoulder, their thighs flush on the couch. He's passing a Doritos chip to his starving friend.

And he looks great.

Wally carefully cups his best friend's perfect cheeks and leans in, into the half-formed word hanging from Robin's breath, and as he pushes through the solid soundwave, he can hear the next syllable: "-n."

Dick's skin is cool against Wally's warm palms, and he's almost close enough to graze their noses as he rotates his friend's head farther to the left, a little farther than it should go. From Wally's perspective, it's a slow, almost gentle turn, and maybe if it had been slow, if it had been gentle, the flexible acrobat could have twisted his neck that far around his shoulder.

But it's not slow and gentle, and Wally steps on the bag of chips at their feet to cover the sickening crack of Robin's vertebrae - _the highest ones, the highest, they make it quickest, the most painless_ - as the bones - _so beautiful, so fragile_ - fracture into pieces and slice through the his delicate spinal cord.

Sometimes, Wally will count the seconds between what he sees and what he hears to gauge his speed, the way children count the seconds between a flash of lighting and thunder to guess how far away away a storm is. Normally he counts the seconds, but this time he feels only microseconds slip by.

He can't breathe, neither of them have time, and Robin's lungs will never remember how.

Wally stares, unseeing, into the dark mirrors of Dick's sunglasses that slide just below his eyes; the Wally's own reflected image slips away with them. His friend's irises flood with Wally's favorite shade of blue as the pupils constrict in shock, and today they match his evening-sky colored hoodie.

He cradles the wilting boy before he can slide onto the couch, and he arranges Robin, just so, under the comforter they had shared. Anyone who wanders by will think their leader had settled in for a nap on his side.

One hand is tucked beneath his soft, dark hair and the other across his chest over the blanket; knees are tucked halfway to his torso. Wally leaves Dick's feet out just past the bottom of the comforter. He always keeps them free, so that if he needs to get up to fight, they won't get tangled. Wally gently loops the bottom ankle over the top one, though, replicating Dick's cute bad habit of inefficiently interlocking his calves.

Robin is Wally's life-sized porcelain action figure, with more than 230 points of articulation.

Strands of Dick's shiny hair still hang suspended above his head; they haven't had time to fall on their own. The speedster doesn't have time for this, but he takes a full half-second to run his fingers through the wisps, ruffling them so they drape naturally over his forehead and sunglasses. He's _wasting time_, the Voice hisses, but he takes it anyway, for a reason he can't recall.

4.6718 seconds and counting.

He's wasted too much time but also not enough. As he dashes from the room, Wally doesn't notice that Robin had bitten his cheek hard when his head snapped to the left, and now a thin trail of blood pools at the edge of his lips and drips onto the couch.

* * *

_Everything hurt; everything burned. He couldn't breathe; he couldn't see. He wished he could stop crying because the tears stung as they coated his cheeks. His mouth tasted like blood and something bitter; he couldn't remember which part of the formula it could be._

_An EMT leaned over him, carefully brushing a stray lock of singed hair out from under the bandages over his face; he opened his mouth in a silent wail as the ambulance careened around a corner before it slowed in front of the ER. The doors swung open, and two doctors greeted the EMTs inside with shouted commands and information._

_"First degree chemical burns … prep the OR … explosion on Pine street four minutes ago … retained consciousness … patient intubated … "_

_Wally registered yet another prick at his inner elbow. The morphine finally kicked in._

_They carefully lowered the gurney to the ground; the little boy rolled his eyes - what remained of his right one - to the skies and the faces above him._

_Barry was already there. He beat the ambulance._

_It took the damaged, sedated boy a few seconds to remember how that was possible, but when he did his face contorted in guilt and shame._

_Barry jostled the EMTs aside; "Hang in there, kid - it'll be ok, you're alive, that's what matters," he said before the nurses and doctors pulled him back and rolled Wally toward the ER._

_"... I'm sorry," Wally tried to say, "I didn't mean to."_

_But he couldn't speak, and it was obviously a lie, anyway._

_Wally heard his parent's car pull in behind them; his hysterical mother slamming the door and racing toward Barry._

_"Barry, Barry, where is he? Is he ok? How did you get …"_

_Barry wrapped an arm around Mary's shoulder. "They have him, Mary. I was here on forensic business already … they're going to …"_

_Their voices faded as the sliding doors closed at Wally's feet and they pushed him into the operating room. Everything was happening too fast and too slow at once._


End file.
